Don't Let a Little Extraction Scare You!

Lauren B. Eisenberg Davis

The article "The Power of
Extracts" in the inaugural issue of the
Kielce-Radom SIG Journal introduced
the process and value of vital record extractions. It is now
time to convince you that this is not just a tool available
to an elite group of experienced professionals. Anybody
can perform extractions given a bit of patience and motivation.

A Case in Point

In February 1995, I paid my first visit to a Mormon Family
History Center. I was completely unprepared for Polish-language
document research. Sheer determination caused me to bully my
way through the records of my ancestral town of Radom.
In May 1995, after pointing me toward Checiny to find my
Manela ancestors (whom I'd erroneously believed had come from
Radom), Warren Blatt sent me his vital record extracts for
Checiny 1810-1819. He explained that it was very difficult to
use the 1810-1825 microfilms, in which Jews were intermixed in
the Roman Catholic civil register, and often had no surnames.
His extract document had isolated the Jewish records, and
assigned conjectural surnames to many of the families
therein.

I was amazed at the work he had done. I wanted the remainder
of the Checiny pre-1826 Jewish records extracted from the
microfilms of the Roman Catholic civil records as well, to aid
in my research. Understand that in my mind, at that time, this
meant that I wanted Warren to complete the project he had
started. Unfortunately, Warren was completely immersed in his
work as chairman of the 1996 Summer Seminar, and additionally,
Checiny was no longer at the top of his personal research
priority list. He had every intention of returning to complete
the project . . . eventually. However, "eventually" was not
good enough for my needs: I was writing a family history book,
and needed the 1820-1825 data for my own family research.
I came to a frightening realization: I had no choice but to
attempt to extract the Jewish records from those years myself.
I was, at the time, a six-month-old genealogy infant.

And so I embarked on this monumental adventure, which, I
can honestly say, in retrospect, completely shaped my genealogy
"career". It was a formidable task. Checiny had a
fairly large Jewish population. The handwriting of the Checiny
clerks was particularly horrible. Additionally, I did not have
the luxury of determining my own extract style, or deciding to
proceed slowly and only extract the very basic items from the
records. I was completing an existing project, which had been
started by a genealogist with very high standards and many
years of experience behind him. I had to complete the project
in the same detailed style that Warren had begun it.

Fortunately, I had Warren looking over my shoulder,
correcting my errors, and offering advice as I struggled along.
He constantly pushed me to my technical limits, and beyond.
At one point, early on, he mentioned that he noticed that I
had not extracted the town names for the 1824 and 1825 marriages
(the only two years I had completed at that time). Geography
is not my strength, I told him, wondering if indeed I had any
strength at all in this venture. The towns are just so hard
for me, too hard, I admitted. Warren patiently explained to
me that the towns are one of the most crucial bits of
information buried in the marriage registrations. They
identify prior towns that our ancestors came from, origins of
out-of-town brides and grooms. Insurmountable as it seemed,
I added towns to my list of extract information for marriages,
double checking my work with Where Once We Walked to
verify that I had indeed copied a name of a legitimate location.

As time progressed, I made a startling discovery. This
enormously frustrating project had become much easier. At the
most exasperating moments early in the extraction, my only wish
was to be done. Warren had told me that he actually enjoyed
extracting, a concept that I found to be ludicrous. And yet,
the longer I struggled, the less I struggled. It was an
adventure, a journey, and I learned to love it.

I became familiar with the residents of Checiny, and could
recognize their surnames, if they had any, and the names of
most of the nearby towns from which spouses were imported.
When surnames were not present, I often recognized particular
groupings of given names that identified specific families.
I began to relax and enjoy the challenge and discovery of the
project, and gained the confidence to personalize the work
I'd done apart from Warren's portion of the extracts.

Once the extractions were complete, I performed a variety
of analysis on the data: conjectural surnames for many families
that had none, multiple surnames for a number of families,
mortality study, occupation distribution, and correlation
of birth and death records. I was able to see my ancestors
not as isolated Jews, but as part of a larger community.
I could find the origins of naming anomalies that would
otherwise have prevented me from tracing certain branches
of the family.

I made many exciting discoveries about my family, and about
life in the Checiny region. After my initial intimidation about
undertaking such a project, I found that I now wanted to extract
more towns, to discover the hidden secrets of my past.

Starting Your Own Extraction Project

A comprehensive extraction project, extracting records for
all Jews of a town, differs from extracting information just
for your known relatives only in volume. It is simply a set
of individual record extractions. It is not necessary to have
a working knowledge of the Polish or Russian languages.
Resources are available to help you conquer the language barrier.
Realize that the standard vocabulary used in vital records is
a rather limited collection of words. Arm yourself with the
following materials:

Russian-Language Documents from Russian Poland:
A Translation Manual for Genealogists, by Jonathan
Shea

a list of towns and villages in the region

Familiarize yourself with the format of the records and
the look of the language. Since Napoleanic format is a
paragraph style essay, you need to be able to identify the
components. See figure 1 (courtesy of Warren Blatt) for an
example of a birth registration and its translation.

Figure 1
Birth Registration of Alter Chiel Mydlo, July 6, 1856 [from the Civil Register of the Jewish Community
of Checiny, Poland, 1856; on FHL microfilm #730,267; film item
#3, birth registration #111. Transcription and translation
from the original Polish by Warren Blatt.]

It happened in the city of Checiny on the / second /
fourteenth day of July in the year eighteen fifty-six, at eight
o'clock in the morning. Appeared before me the Jew Zysman Mydlo,
aged sixty-six, szpitalnik, living in the city of Checiny; in the
presence of the witnesses, the Jews Ira Maka, szkolnik, and Jcyk
Mydlo, szpitalnik, aged seventy years, both living in Checiny.
And he showed to us a male child, born here in Checiny on the
twenty-fourth of June / sixth of July / of the current year at
eleven o'clock in the morning of his wife Libe daughter of Wolf,
aged forty-five years, to whom the name was given Alter Chiel
Mydlo. Afterwards, this document was read to those present
and was signed by us.

Record number: Always include the record number
("akta") and year for every entry. This enables other
researchers to go back to the original document.

Names and Parents: Include all given names,
surnames and patronymics.

Town: This item is crucial for marriages.
Often one partner was from elsewhere; in order to trace the
ancestors of that partner, you need to know in what town to look.
Sometimes towns other than the town where the event was
registered are identified on birth and death records.
Reasons for this include families that recently moved to the
town may identify their town of origin, visitors to the town
experiencing life cycle events, and most commonly municipalities
whose jurisdiction covers more than a single town.

You can generate a town list geo-centered at your town of
extraction to help identify correct town names. Sometimes the
handwriting on the records is difficult, and the surrounding
town names may look very unfamiliar. This list will help in the
extraction of location names from the records. Use either the
Where Once We Walked Companion or the JewishGen
ShtetlSeeker. Where Once We Walked Companion is
a book available through Avotaynu, and includes detailed
instructions on how to create such a list from the data supplied
in the book and in Where Once We Walked. Those with
Internet access may prefer to use the
JewishGen ShtetlSeeker
database: <http://www.jewishgen.org/Communities>,
which can generate a list of all towns within a radius of up
to 30 miles around your point of interest.

Also, be sure to write down the type of locality:
whether it is identified in the records as a city (in Polish:
miasta), town (miescie) or village (wies).
Additionally, note any jurisdicational information given, such
as the locality's district (powiat) or county
(gmina). This can help identify the correct locality.

Place names are often given in the locative case
in these documents. Example: "in Checiny" =
"Checinach". For details, see Fay Bussgang's
article "How to Pronounce Your Polish Town and Family
Names and Recognize Their Most Common Grammatical
Transformations", in Mass-Pocha (JGS
of Greater Boston), V:3 (Fall 1996), pp. 7-10; or
Kielce-Radom SIG Journal, I:3
(Summer 1997), pp. 3-6.

Age: Age is crucial for a death record, and
interesting for marriage and parents on a birth record. It
can be an important factor in analysis of pre-surname records,
in matching pre-surname families with surnames from a later
period of data. While ages were usually inexact as reported,
they give a general range of years for birth of the person,
which may help pinpoint a specific connection.

Occupation: This is an interesting
characteristic of our ancestors. Occupation is enormously
helpful in assigning conjectural surnames to pre-surname records.
An unusual occupation can narrow down the possibilities
tremendously, or eliminate candidates from contention.
For example,

Chaim, son of Joel, goldsmith
Marya, daughter of Herszel

matches easily with

Chaim Maka, goldsmith
Marya Futerchendler

if other factors, such as age, are in the general range of
similarity, while it is a definite mismatch with

Chaim Gutman, butcher
Marya Bergman

Keep occupations in the original Polish; it's easier, plus
we don't know exactly what they meant in the context of 19th
century Jewish life, so to translate them literally can
introduce unintentional errors. The occupation definitions
that appeared in the previous issue of this journal
(Kielce-Radom SIG Journal,
Volume I, Number 1, pages 31-32) provide a sufficient companion
tool for extracted occupations.

Marital Status: Marital status is very helpful
in tracing multiple spouses, and narrowing down death dates,
searching for marriage records, etc. Note whether a person
is a bachelor (kawaler), maiden (panna) or
widowed (wdowa).

Survivors on death records: The detail varies
from town to town and clerk to clerk. Some towns list only the
spouse. Other towns list surviving children (sometimes with
ages, spouses, and towns of residence), siblings, etc. Be
aware that children identified on a survivor list of a death
registration may not all be from the same marriage.
Consequently, you do not automatically know both parents of
the surviving children. Likewise, if it is the death record
of a woman, do not assume that you implicitly know the children's
surname without further evidence. Additionally, do not assume
that a survivor list is necessarily complete.

Witnesses: In the earlier records (before
1820), witnesses were often members of the family, with
relationship explicitly noted. Even once "standard
witnesses" were used (you will see the same two names
from record to record, year to year), sometimes the witnesses
were still relatives: a death reported by the grandfather or
uncle, the brother of the bride witnessing a marriage.
Note all witnesses whose relationship to the principal party
is stated. It might be the only link to that branch of the
family.

Date of event: This is not to be confused with
date of registration. Some events are registered on a delayed
basis, perhaps several years or more. Sometimes there is a
clause explaining the reason for the delay. Hence, a birth
registered in 1855 is not guaranteed to have occurred in 1855.

House number: Records in the Roman Catholic
registry period (1810-1825) include this information. It can
be helpful in grouping families that lived together, although
if the number does not refer to a single home, but a cluster
of flats for example, the validity of this tool diminishes.

Select a Town

Ideally, we'd like to collectively extract all towns with
records available. Realistically, we have to set our priorities.
Consider the following factors:

Size of the town. Start with a small town if possible.
Checiny was overwhelming. Other towns I've done have been
easier to handle. A small population allows you to chart the
entire town, to recognize all the residents in a short period
of time, and to make more and better associations between
them.

Are the records indexed? Unindexed records are the
highest priority for extraction.

If an index exists, how comprehensive is it? Most towns
list the record number and name as the sole contents of the
index. A very small number of towns, however, have a very
thorough index style, including parents and ages, but this is
extremely rare. It hardly pays to invest the time to extract
such a set, unless you have a specific reason for doing so.
Some indices are chronological, most are
"semi-alphabetical", and some are alphabetical by
given name. See figure 3 for an illustration of a typical
index.

Does this town include mothers' maiden names on the
records? If so, that is definitely a reason to consider
extraction. It is rare to be able to identify mothers of a
particular maiden name you are tracing by viewing the
index.

Select Years

There are three basic eras to consider:

1810-1825: the Roman Catholic registry period.
During this time, all religious groups were included in the
Roman Catholic civil register. During most of this period,
Jews were not required to register with surnames. This is
the single most important phase for extraction. Extraction
is the only practical and realistic way to master the
pre-surname data.

1868+: the Cyrillic period. This period is
difficult for many researchers with limited familiarity with
the Cyrillic alphabet or Russian language. Extractors with
a decent command of the skills needed greatly ease the
difficulties for researchers who are less at ease with this
language barrier.

1826-1867: the Polish language period of Jewish
civil registration. While all extractions are important tools
of genealogy research, this period is of the lowest priority.
Within this phase, I would rank marriages as most crucial,
because they contain the all-important town of origin
information.

Identifying the Jews

If you are planning to extract the Jews from the Roman
Catholic civil register, start by extracting a few years of
the Jewish register beginning in 1826. This will give you
a feel for the surnames and families of the town. It also
eliminates the need to determine which are the Jewish
records.

Once you complete a portion of that, you can begin to extract
Jews from the Roman Catholic civil registry (1810-1825). There
are several clues to use in helping identify which records are
for Jews. Consult the index, if there is one. Look for Jewish
given names. Many surnames of Jews were also surnames used by
Christians, so that is not an enormous help. A few given names
crossed the religion boundaries (Josef, Jakob, Szymon); for
those you will need to examine other names within the record
itself in order to reach a decision. A handful of Jews had
distinctly non-Jewish given names, such as Luka and Brigida.
Again, the total set of names on a record should be the
determining factor.

The presence of Yiddish signatures confirms a Jewish record;
but do not erroneously assume that absence of Yiddish signatures
eliminates the possibility of a Jewish record. Often, records
explicitly identify Jews as "Starozakonny". Sometimes
in the margin or on the index you will see the notation
"Star." or "Zyd". These both indicate Jews.

When using the index as a starting point, go back through the
records looking for "Zyd" or "Star." in the
margins, or the presence of Yiddish signatures, to double check
your work. Some records just donít make it into the index.
The ideal procedure would be to read every record, seeking clues
that would pinpoint the religion of the family.

Some towns have few, if any, Jewish records for the years
1813-1816. However, it is still necessary to comb the records
carefully even if, on the surface, it appears that no Jews
registered. One or two Jewish records may be embedded in the
register.

Standard Format

Surnames should be in all capital letters and bold.
Surnames, if present, should precede the given name.

If any information was absent on the original
record, represent it with a dash "-".

If the information was illegible in the original
record, indicate that with a single question mark.

All conjectured information must be enclosed
within square brackets. Conjectural information is information
that does not appear in the original record, but is added
from an analysis of a collection of records about a family.
A prime example is assignment of a surname to a pre-surname
family.

Sample Extracts

Figure 2 contains examples of birth, marriage and death
extracts. Note that the year will appear only once, before
the set of birth, marriage or death extracts for a given year,
not for each individual record extracted.

Birth Extract

Akt

Surname

Given Name

Parents

Age

Born/Date

1810

6

-

Herszl

Icek Lefkowicz (szynkarz)

25

Polichnie #16

Sura z Herszków

24

Sep 12

Marriage Extract

Akt

Surname

Given Name

Age

Parents

Town

1819

38

[MYDLARZ]

Josek

19

Moszek Hylowicz (piekarz)

Sobków

[cf POTASNICKI]

Ryfka z Dawidów

[DZIADEK]

Eidla

19

Herszek Rubinowicz (szynkarz)

Checiny

Leja z Majorków

Death Extract

Akt

Surname

Given Name

Age

Parents

1861

17

FRYDMAN

Mindla

48

Josia FRYDMAN

BAUMGARTEN

Dwojra

(husband: Herszek BOIMGARTEN, przekupnikdaughters: Dwojra, age 30 married to Osier SWIERZC
Pesla, age 25, married to Dawid RAJS
Malka Ruchla, age 23, married to Berek SZPEKTOR
Chaja Sura, age 17)

Birth extract: No surname appeared on the
original registration and this family was not identified in
the post-surname records extracted, so no conjectural surname
was assigned. The extract summarizes the registration of
Checiny 1810 birth record #6, the birth of Herszl to Icek,
son of Lefka, szynkarz (innkeeper) by trade, age 25, and Sura,
daughter of Herszek, age 24, in house #16 in the village of
Polichnie, on September 12.

Marriage extract: No surnames appeared on the
original registration, but further study of later records
yielded surnames for both bride and groom, as well as the fact
that the groom used two different surnames. This extract
summarizes the registration of Checiny 1819 marriage #38 of
Josek (who later took on the surnames Potasnicki and Mydlarz),
age 19, son of Moszek son of Hyl, piekarz (baker) by trade,
and Ryfka daughter of Dawid, of the town of Sobkow, to Eidla
(whose family later took on the surname Dziadek), age 19,
daughter of Herszek son of Rubin, szynkarz by trade, and
Leja daughter of Majorek, of Checiny.

Death extract: Although this extract is not
from either Kielce or Radom gubernias, but rather from Lublin
gubernia, it is one of the finest examples in my collection.
It summarizes Izbica 1861 death record #17 of Mindla Frydman
(maiden name) Baumgarten (married name), age 48, daughter of
Josia Frydman and Dwojra, leaving behind a husband, three
married daughters and their husbands, and an unmarried daughter.